Practical Techniques for Dairy Nutrition Monitoring and Trouble-Shooting

A practical veterinary CPD Course for large animal vets

Key Benefits

• Practical forage and TMR analysis; rumen fluid sampling; protozoal assessments

• Gain more confidence in dairy nutrition

• Develop a new fee-earning service for your vet practice

• Discover new equipment and try it out

Overview

This one day course is designed for those vets with an interest in dairy cow nutrition, wishing to increase their skills, knowledge and confidence in on-farm practical assessments of diets and rumen health.

Morning class room session, discussions will include:

• sub-acute ruminal acidosis
• rumen physiology
• forage analysis reports
• relevant Cow Signals scoring (e.g rumen fill scores and faeces scoring)
• using a forage particle separator (“Penn State separator”)
• providing a simple rumen health monitoring service to clients.

The on-farm afternoon session will put theory into practice. A housed herd with on-going rumen health monitoring will be selected. Rumen fluid will be collected from a sample of cows using rumenocentesis and an oral rumen probe for comparison. A full appraisal of the rumen health and feeding practices will be done, including transition cow management,bunk management and TMR assessments.

Practical skills

As with all Embryonics courses, this is hands-on, andwe want you to use the opportunity to come away with new practical skills you can immediately use back in practice. The following techniques will be used:

• rumenocentesis
• use of an oral rumen fluid scoop
• faecal sieving – process, scoring system and interpretation
• dry matter estimations using a forage dehydrator
• forage particle (Penn State) separator: use and interpretation of results
• rumen fluid examination: pH meters (how to use correctly)
• microscopical examination and protozoal scoring
• redoxtesting
• cow-side BHB testing
• blood ketonemeters
• bladder catheterisation